Interview with Joel Neff of the Learned newsletter

This is my recent interview of Joel Neff, publisher of the Substack newsletter Learned.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm Joel.  I'm a university teacher, linguist, writer and about a half-dozen other things.  Beyond that, I'm raising a kid, a dog, and a bunch of houseplants and doing mostly okay at it.  In my spare time, I collect LEGO cars and plastic spaceships.

How would you describe your newsletter?

My newsletter, Learned (https://learned.substack.com) started as a place for me to write about the things I wanted to know more about and has become a place for me to write about languages and language learning with bits and pieces of lifelong learning, productivity, and music thrown in.

Why did you decide to publish on Substack?

The promise of Substack was (and perhaps still is) the idea that a writer can build a following and revenue stream independent of a major publication.  At the same time, by drawing that revenue directly from subscribers, Substack promised a more direct sales channel than blogging with a more transparent view of how much you could expect to earn (i.e. Substack's model seemed to be an improvement over traditional blogging's banner ads).

What has your experience with your newsletter been like?

Hit and miss.  Content-wise, it seems to be popular enough, but I have been surprised at the amount of pushback from readers who do not want to subscribe to even a free version as they do not want things in their inbox.  As it stands, if I am reading the numbers right, I have a substantial number of readers who come to the site directly rather than receive the newsletter via email.

What have you liked most about your experience on Substack?

As a writing and publishing platform, I really like Substack.  The tools are easy to use and there has been a slow but steady improvement in them over the years.  That said, there are still several features that they have been slow to implement.

What have you liked least about your Substack experience?

Two things:  I am still frustrated by an inability to change the rates we, as creators, can ask for.  Although we offer discounts, the price remains fixed at a minimum of $5 per month (as far as I am aware).  I would very much like to change that.  The second thing is outreach.  There was an implication, at least in the beginning, that Substack would push your newsletter(s) out to readers through various means.  That has not seemed to happen* and instead creators have been left to find their audiences all on their own.

*The recent kerfuffle with it coming to light that Substack has paid certain writers has not helped with this.  Have they spent money promoting the content they've paid for at the expense of other, smaller, publications?

How have you let people know about your newsletter?

Not well enough.  I'm not very active on social media and relied mainly on word-of-mouth and organic discovery.  It hasn't worked all that well.  Now I'm focussed on community interaction (like answering interview questions) to build readership rather than spamming Twitter or other social media.  Although I think I probably should do that, too.

Is there a post in your newsletter that you consider most memorable, and if so, why?

I don't know if most memorable is exactly the way I'd describe it, but back in Volume 1, Issue 10, (https://learned.substack.com/p/learned-10-toki) I took a look into artificial languages and it was just a lot of fun to research and write.  So much so that I took the time and effort to learn Toki Pona, an artificial language written to be as positive as possible.  For me, getting to look into something so fun and interesting and then present it to people was the moment I decided to really make a go of the newsletter and to keep at it for at least a year.  Three years later and here we are.

What do you hope for your newsletter in the foreseeable future?

I'm about to launch Volume 4; I hope to double my readership and my paid subscribers from my current numbers and to take some of my older content and package it into an ebook or two.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about my newsletter.  I've enjoyed thinking about and answering these questions.